This Week in the Mercury
Wednesday, April 14, 2010
Build Out Minority Report: Memorial Coliseum Process Flawed.
Posted by Sarah Mirk on Wed, Apr 14, 2010 at 4:18 PM
All the points spelled out in the minority report (here as a pdf) lead to one main conclusion: despite looking at hundreds of ideas and hosting dozens of hours of public meetings, the process to choose a new use for the Coliseum is weighted in favor of the Blazers.
Details below the cut.
The current operating agreement for Memorial Coliseum bans any non-PAM owned group running the Coliseum as a spectator facility. That means any group who wants to redevelop the building wouldn't be able to host any concerts or big games—the kinds of events that make lots of money. Mayor Sam Adams office has told the people pitching ideas for Memorial Coliseum to not worry about the contract, that his office would work out any conflicts after the stakeholder committee and city council chose a final plan. But rival redeveloper Doug Obletz said the city should rework its contract with the Blazers now, rather than having the redevelopers spend money and time drawing up plans when the specifics of the contract are still up in the air.
The minority report agrees with Obletz, saying the city needs to rework its contract with the Blazers before it takes formal requests for proposals for the Coliseum. Report writer Will Macht pointed out to City Council this afternoon that, contrary to public perception, the Blazers and PAM make money off the Coliseum (the building has made the city $3.7 million in profit over the past 10 years) and quoted Blazers president Larry Miller saying, "The current agreement is very important to our business model, so any changes to the agreement will need to add significant benefits to PAM."
- The Blazer's Jumptown, including the Coliseum.
While the advisory committee is just supposed to look at uses for the Coliseum, three of the final five plans are closely linked to what happens in the Rose Quarter as a whole. The minority report argues that it's unfair for the Blazers to head into planning process this summer for how to revitalize the Rose Quarter when several of the projects hinge on the nature of the area around Memorial Coliseum.
"It cements the perception that the public process is a cover for a private party, especially one with substantial economic interests, to plan public property for its own economic benefit," says the report.
In the Daily Journal of Commerce, Portland Development Commission staffer Kia Selley responded to the criticism, saying, “The Blazers are open to the discussion of the operating agreement and will very likely need to renegotiate even if their option is selected. Opening up that process at this time is not necessary or appropriate.”
Even if the public process for the future of Memorial Coliseum does favor the Blazers, that doesn't mean their plan is not without real support. Members of the Friends of Memorial Coliseum, the US Green Building Council and the National Trust for Historic Preservation all support the Blazers plan over the other two on the table because it is the only plan that does not remove the Coliseum's iconic bowl.
Council is discussing the plans for Memorial Coliseum now—check back for updates.
Update: Members of the majority of the stakeholder committee call the discussion over the contract conflict a "red herring." They believe that if the Blazers are not the chosen developer, there's no way they would go on their new faith contract.
Update 4:58 pm: Blazers VP of business affairs Larry Miller J. Isaacs gets the chance to sing the praises of the operating agreement. The operating agreement dates back 17 years ago to when the Rose Garden was built with "virtually all private" money. The $34 million that the city put in was to build two parking garages and refurbish the Memorial Coliseum—an investment Miller says has netted the city $60 million.
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1) Demand lots of expensive "process"
2) Get a lot of expensive "process"
3) Declare "process" invalid
4) Demand a new "process"
5) Repeat steps 1 through 4 as many times as necessary
6) Realize that during the "process", the economy and most of the other relevant facts on the ground have changed
7) Stick final report on shelf, ignore
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I don't even know why Obletz is bothering. If the city actually went in to try and negotiate with Vulcan the smart business decision would be to tell the city to kick rocks because they fulfilled their end of the bargain building the RG. This really isn't a surprise.
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@Smirk - I read through that pdf and the minority report looked like an official part of a much larger document. Did they really "split from the rest of the committee" in writing it? Minority reports are sometimes just a good tool for reaching consensus. If your group reaches a key decision, you might write up the losing option - either to archive it's arguments, or as a way of explaining your reasoning to a larger audience. Is that what happened here? Or is it a more dramatic "we give up!" kind of thing?
I've heard the Mayor explain that we are postponing looking at contract conflicts because we shouldn't rule out any options this early. Let's figure out what we want to do, and then go fight for it if the current contract doesn't allow it. That makes more sense to me. These dissenters say they want LESS Blazer influence AND want to kick out any proposals that don't match their current contract - that doesn't seem to make much sense.
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A little research would reveal that SAC Member Rosemary Colliver, the person responsible for the "red herring" comment, works for the law firm (Tonkon Torp) that counts both the Trail Blazers and Winterhawks among their clients. Did she reveal her conflict of interest to the Council before issuing her on-the-spot legal opinion? No. This is but one example of a very screwed up, conflict-filled public process.
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That's our Mayor! If a non-Blazer group is selected, I'm sure the Blazers would love to give up a pretty good revenue source apparently and modify the contract to allow the non-Blazer group to directly compete with the Blazer's for concerts and other large events.
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Though Collins is a sports lawyer at Tonkon Torp, a law office where some lawyers have done work for the Blazers, she denies having worked for the Blazers or the Winterhawks. I'm looking into whether that's true.
In the meantime, be aware that while Blogtown is full of good-natured baseless accusations, comments that falsely accuse specific individuals of crimes or serious ethical violations will be deleted. If you have info to back up a conflict of interest Colliver may have, feel free to drop me a line at smirk@portlandmercury.com. If not, don't go pointing fingers.
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Fast forward to 2010…Portland has one of the highest rates of unemployment in the nation. There is an opportunity to create thousands of jobs. So far I’ve seen two of the three proposers pick non local General Contractors, and that is the one thing that absolutely no one is focusing on. “MARC” has teamed with Howard S. Wright, a Washington based General, and “VMAC” has teamed with Kiewit Corporation, an Omaha, Nebraska based contractor. The Blazers have not yet announced who they plan to use, but I’m counting on them to be responsible and choose a company that is truly owned and operated in Oregon. Given the track record of the Rose Garden, Turner (German Owned) / JE Dunn (Kansas City), they might go down the same path as the rest of the teams.
The Blazers are teaming with developer Cordish who on their last project, “Kansas City Lights”, located in Kansas City, had a lot of problems from the minority community, but at least they hired local Kansas based contractor, JE Dunn, to do the work. Most Oregonians don’t realize that while a lot of the General contractors such as Turner (German Owned), Skanska (Swiss Owned), JE Dunn (Kansas City), Howards S. Wright (Seattle Washington), Kiewit Corporation (Omaha Nebraska) have offices in Oregon but are not Oregon based.
This means that the profits the companies make, do not recirculate in the Oregon economy. When you’re talking about millions of tax dollars going to these projects, it is irresponsible to hire non-local contractors and negligent when you’re talking about non-American owned companies such as Turner and Skanska. We have a host of locally owned General Contractors with great track records including: Hoffman, Anderson, Walsh, Emerick, R&H to name a few. While my firm is too small to go after such a large project, I’d rather see local contractors when it comes to publicly funded projects, because the money stays in our economy. Let’s hope the Blazers don’t go down the same road they did when they built the Rose Garden hiring Turner/JE Dunn to be their contractor (keep our dollars in our COMMUNITY!!!). I love reading the Mercury, and I hope it will write an article about how many jobs are being taken from the qualified local General Contractors.
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